Lightweight web-based gallery applications

Photo Opps

Sometimes full-blown photo sharing solutions are more than you need. We look at some lightweight alternatives that still get the job done.

Gallery, phTagr, Piwigo, Zenphoto – there is no lack of highquality web-based photo sharing applications. But, if you want to quickly publish a handful of images without going through the rigmarole of installing, configuring, maintaining, and learning a full-blown photo sharing solution, then you might want to opt for something less advanced. Although lightweight gallery applications don’t offer anything besides the most basic functionality, they can be used for a variety of purposes, from quickly publishing snapshots taken with an Android device to setting up an ad hoc screenshot gallery.

Several gallery applications can be described as lightweight, and they all share several traits. First, most of them don’t require a database back end, which significantly simplifies installation and maintenance. Second, many of these applications don’t have any exotic requirements and will happily run on a regular web server with PHP and the GD graphics library. In most cases, to install a lightweight gallery application, you only need to copy the application’s directory to the web server’s root. Configuration usually consists of editing a few parameters, and populating galleries with images and photos is often done by uploading files to a specific directory.